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April 14, 2011

WWE's Edge Forced Into Sudden Retirement

By - Kris Fletcher

Adam Copeland, better known by his WWE ring name Edge, has been forced to retire due to a neck injury.

Photo by: WWE Images

On Monday nights edition of Raw, Copeland announced that he has been diagnosed with spinal stenosis and would therefore follow his doctor's advice and retire from professional wrestling effective immediately, vacating the World Heavyweight Championship in the process.

The WWE has since confirmed that this is NOT one of their "storylines," and that Edge's retirement is in fact REAL. An article on wwe.com discussing the matter reads:

"Of late, Edge has been suffering from numbness and uncontrollable trembling in his arms and hands. This is not the first time he has experienced these symptoms of nueropraxia. An MRI in Atlanta last Monday was sent to Dr. Joseph Maroon, a renowned neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery at The Pittsburgh School of Medicine. After careful examination of the MRI, it has been determined that Edge will never be cleared to compete again and thus is forced to retire."

"In 2003, Edge underwent a two level spinal fusion of the discs between his C5, C6 and C7 vertebrae. After being cleared to compete, he returned to the ring, resulting in stenosis of the spine, or a narrowing of the spinal column, above and below the fused discs. This narrowing resulted in less and less of the vital fluid needed to protect the spinal cord. Medical professionals cannot clear Edge to compete ever again in WWE, since doing so could result in paralysis or even death."

Officially, his final match was at WrestleMania XXVII, where he successfully defended the World Heavyweight Championship against Alberto Del Rio.

Overall, Edge won a total of thirty one titles in the WWE. The most by a single individual in the history of the company. He was an eleven-time World Champion, five-time Intercontinental Champion, fourteen-time Tag Team Champion and one-time United States Champion.

In addition to his championship reigns, Edge also won the 2001 King of the Ring tournament, the inaugural Money in the Bank ladder match in 2005 and the 2010 Royal Rumble match, making him the only wrestler in history to achieve all three of those distinctions.

On a personal note, he's one of my all-time favorite performers, so I hate to see him go.

His sudden retirement definitely hurts the weekly WWE Friday night show Smackdown, since he basically carried the program. However, I'm glad that he decided to retire rather than continuing and possibly injuring himself even more.

To me, the fact that he went out as a champion is fitting. If anyone ever earned that right, it was him.